French Foreign Legion

by Douglas Porch

  For these reasons, on December 15, 1917, Lyautey floated a sterner proposal that special “concentration camps” be created in Algeria where “the life of ex-legionnaires who have been interned is rendered less soft and above all by abolishing their salary.” However, this appears to have fallen on deaf ears, for on March 16, 1918, the commander of the 1st Battalion of the 1er étranger reported that foreigners were not reenlisting because the wages paid to internees in France and Algeria were superior. Tire following month he complained that his companies were down to one hundred men, that the “enormous majority” preferred internment and that the only reenlistments were among men in trouble with the law. By the summer of 1918, the five Legion battalions in North Africa had seen their strength considerably diminished. So desperate was the situation that Lyautey had been forced to impress men from the transportation corps, who made terrible legionnaires. A note of June 9, 1918, proposed that legionnaires whose contracts had expired be offered the choice of a five-hundred-franc reenlistment bonus or being sent to Corsica, because they posed a threat to the security of North Africa.35

  The situation in France was hardly better, and the RMLE struggled to maintain a fighting strength—indeed, it struggled to remain in existence. The basic problem, in some ways the irony, for the Legion was that in the situation of a world war, recruits were hard to come by. The feast of recruits in 1914–15 had turned to famine by 1918. Rollet summed up the Legion's situation succinctly in July 1918:

  Since the entry of Belgium, Italy, Portugal, America and Greece into the war, since the creation of the Polish, Czechoslovakian and Armenian national armies, the Legion has lost many of its best soldiers and has seen its sources of recruitment dry up. Only the Swiss and Spanish continue to enlist. (Their numbers vary from 80 to 100 a month—totally insufficient to keep up strength.)36

  Furthermore, the poor treatment of many volunteers in the war's opening weeks made the government wary of sending some men to the Legion. This, combined with the expansion of the artillery under Pétain, meant that foreigners volunteering for service might be enlisted in the Legion pro forma and then sent to a regular French unit. For instance, there were still a small but important number of Americans who were willing to enlist because they wished to get into action quickly and avoid being sent back to the United States for prolonged training. This is precisely what happened to the American Julian Green, who left the Ambulance Corps to see more active service. “As a foreigner, I could not be allowed to join the French army, but this difficulty was neatly got around by first having me sign up in the Foreign Legion (in which I remained for the space of an hour), and then transferring me from the Legion into the regular army.”37 The Legion career of Cole Porter appears to have been identical to that of Green, and certainly too short to have served as inspiration for any of his music— enlisted in the Legion on April 20, 1918, assigned to the 3rd Artillery Regiment and sent to the artillery school at Fountainebleau.38

  The British offering their services to the Legion, if the archives of the French military attaché in London are anything to go by, were unpromising material. They included H. D. Baird of County Wexford, who could not join the British army because “owing to an accident... I am compelled to wear a rubber tube inserted in my side (it was my side that was injured)”; a retired Indian army major—“I speak Hindustani”; a veteran of Egypt, South Africa and the Sudan—“although I am a little over 60, I am as good as most men of 40”; another “from a good family well known in Norfolk” who claimed to see very well with glasses and wanted to know if he could join when he turned 18; an American married to “a French lady—and a better wife no man could wish for”; a lieutenant cashiered from the British army because “he took no interest in his work”; a seventeen-year-old schoolboy; a Portuguese whose father did not want him to go to the front “and risk my life” but who was “ready to join any branch of the said legion, such as garrison duty, or any other work as a soldier”; four American Rhodes Scholars studying at Oxford; and so on.39 In short, there was nothing that looked very promising there. The only slightly mitigating factor in all of this, if mitigating it was, was that regular units were also scraping the bottom of the recruitment barrel.

  The recruitment crisis was serious because of large defections that continued to deplete Legion ranks in 1918. The Czechs were allowed to form their own army in 1918, and this cost Rollet 1,020 men.40 Lyautey protested loudly when two Czechs departed Morocco to join their own army, which was forming at Cognac, because soon others would ask to do the same thing.41 The problem for the Legion was not simply finding bodies, but men who would make good soldiers. Rollet complained that the Czechs, like the Poles and Armenians before them, had left the Legion under great pressure, “under the menace of being considered as shirkers refusing to defend their national cause.”42 He reported in July 1918 that the only replacements he had for the departing Czechs were 150 wounded legionnaires still on convalescent leave and a group of 694 Russians, “265 of whom declared they do not want to fight.”

  In the wake of the Revolution, the Russians were a risky proposition— already in September 1917, three battalions of Russians sent to France to participate on the Western Front had mutinied at the camp of La Courtine. At first, the Legion incorporated the reluctant Russians anyway, but this had produced numerous desertions. However, those Russians who had not deserted had fought very well in April, May and June 1918. Therefore, a further 375 Russians willing to fight were sent to the front in June and July. They did not desert, according to Rollet, “but the conduct under fire of these Russians was not brilliant—as soon as they were under a violent artillery barrage, they found a shell hole and remained there all day, allowing their neighbors to attack by themselves. Their comrades, old legionnaires, because of this are very angry with them.” As a consequence, they were worse than useless—they could not be trusted with automatic weapons, “the soul of a combat group” and were too unreliable to bring up ammunition, and their lack of French excluded their use as telephonists or runners. He noted that of 300 Russians in the regiment, eighty had deserted or were awaiting a court-martial. He thought that the maximum number of Russian replacements the regiment could absorb was 180, “chosen among the best” of the training camp, who would be distributed 15 to a company. “To go beyond this number would be dangerous and risk a disaster,” he concluded, and suggested that the rest be sent to North Africa or to the Russian Legion.43

  Desperate for men—indeed, apparently on the verge of panic—Rollet suggested three recruitment sources: The first was to seek volunteers among French regiments. Calls for old legionnaires to return had produced only mediocre results, “old territorials, NCOs for the most part.” But if each French regiment furnished only two volunteers, this could give him six to seven hundred men. “The Foreign Legion has always contained, in peacetime, 40 per cent French,” he wrote. “It would be a good thing to return to this wise tradition.” Second, he believed that a recruiting drive among “Yugoslavians” captured by the Serbs and placed in POW camps in Corsica would net a further hundred. Last, as a measure of his desperation, he was even prepared to take German and Austrian legionnaires from Morocco— “Some Legion officers have received letters on this subject. One could call upon this category of excellent legionnaires. One could certainly obtain 100 volunteers in this way.” He castigated the refusal of Morocco to send reinforcements, arguing that repatriated French POWs could replace vacancies there.

  This report is a curious one for several reasons. In the first place, 905 Frenchmen, by far the largest national contingent, were already serving in the RMLE by June 1918.44 Also, while spending much ink on the possibility of enlisting a dollop of Germans and Yugoslavs, Rollet apparently ignored the assignment to artillery units of foreigners like Julian Green and Cole Porter who were enlisting in the Legion. Perhaps he was not aware that this was going on. More likely, as will be seen later, he was not interested in enlisting foreigners from countries with political clout. In July 1918, a
n American citizen, Frank S. Butterworth, proposed the recruitment of a “regiment” for the French Foreign Legion in the United States, but was refused permission by the Secretary of War.45 Also, a small unit of legionnaires was dispatched to the United States in September 1918 to tour the country in support of liberty loans. However, this does not seem to have produced any American recruits for the Legion.46 Nor does Rollet appear to have considered the possibility of incorporating into the Legion some of the large numbers of native troops from the colonies who were flowing into the French army by 1918, even as a temporary measure to replace casualties and departures. This can only be explained as part of the colonial mentality, when, even on the Western Front and in a unit serving as part of the Moroccan Division that contained Moslem units, Rollet obviously believed the Legion should retain its character as a troupe blanche. In this, Rollet only reflected the tradition of the French army, which, as in the British and American armies in this period, was to maintain separate regiments.

  Rollet ended with a desperate plea for the Legion, which he appears to believe was in serious danger of being disbanded. In the process, he demonstrated his budding talent as a public relations expert, which he would use in the interest of the Legion so effectively in the interwar years: “A regiment with such tradition and such a history must not die,” he appealed.

  It must live until the end of the war, even if one must increase strength through levies on French regiments. This would be an excellent source—to transfer around 500 soldiers from infantry regiments to the Legion would create in several days 500 heroes. One must add that if the Regiment of the Legion was dissolved during the War, it would not be possible to reconstitute it in peacetime (just remember the attacks of the foreign press between 1900 and 1914). And so would vanish this excellent school of energy, of will, of courage which formed the heart and character of ardent young officers full of fire who would go afterward into the regiments in settled garrisons, animated with sacred fire and maintain the good and healthy traditions—It would not be a simple unit which would disappear with the Legion, but a notable part of the worth of the French army.47

  Why Rollet was so worked up about the disbandment of the Legion is difficult to imagine. According to Elisabeth Erulin's figures, the Legion counted 12,687 men in 1918.48 Legally all foreigners in the French army were required at least to pass through it. It was an internal part of imperial defense in North Africa and Indochina. If it were disbanded, France would have to intern most of the foreigners serving in North Africa. Therefore, for both practical and legal reasons, the Legion appeared in no real danger of disappearing in 1918. However, the RMLE was very much under threat, all the more so because it was taking terrific losses in the fighting that raged in France in the spring and summer of 1918.

  The Legion was not involved in the initial fighting touched off by the Michael Offensives launched principally at the British lines around Saint-Quentin on March 21. However, by late April the Germans were threatening- to seize the strategically significant communications center of Amiens. On April 26, the RMLE together with English troops was ordered to occupy the Hangard Wood, which lay just north of the Amiens-Noyon highway. Despite support from rolling barrages and tanks, the fighting was desperate in the open conditions of the “war of movement,” where front lines were not well defined by trench lines as they had been for almost four years. German machine-gun teams infiltrated into the porous lines between the advanced posts and wrought havoc among legionnaires who attempted to advance in a thick fog.

  The rolling barrage, developed for the static conditions of 1916 and 1917, proved to be too imprecise in conditions of fluid fighting. Legionnaires who attempted to advance behind the British tanks were cut down, so that the attack faltered after it had gone barely seven hundred yards. A German counterattack drove the Allies out of the wood, but they returned to establish a precarious dominance. The day cost the RMLE 120 men killed, 497 wounded and 205 missing. The 1st Battalion was down to 1 officer and 187 legionnaires. The Legion continued to hold the wood under a drizzle, sometimes a downpour, of harassing artillery and isolated attacks by German patrols until relieved on May 6. “The attack of 26 April has permitted once again to demonstrate that valorous troops will always know how to make up for insufficient support by their devotion and their heroism,” the regimental diary concluded.49

  Although the German offensive stalled before Amiens, Ludendorff and Hindenburg held a surprise up their sleeve. May 27 was the turn of the French on the Chemin des Dames west of Reims, the very area where the Nivelle offensive had faltered barely a year earlier. Despite directives from Petain insisting that the French lines be organized for a defense in depth, the French sector commander placed the bulk of his forces in the forward trenches, where many fell victim to the initial German barrage. By May 30, the RMLE together with the entire Moroccan Division had been bussed to the Montagne de Paris just west of Soissons to make a stand.

  The German attack began at nine o'clock in the morning. Using infiltration techniques and supported by artillery, the Germans gradually pushed back the Legion first line, which also suffered from a lack of munitions. However, once they arrived at the main position, the enemy could advance no further, either then or on the following day, when the regimental diary declared triumphantly: “The question is answered—the Boches even when numerous, will not pass in front of the Legion.” Although the Legion suffered only 42 men killed during the two days of fighting, 219 were wounded and 70 missing.50 The Legion continued to fight around Soissons over the next few days, taking a minor but steady drain of losses, many to gas shells. On the 12th it withstood a violent German attack supported by artillery at a cost of 36 dead, 94 wounded and 5 missing. The forward elements were praised for their skill and open fighting and in holding steady despite the German barrage. However, the diary notes that the regiment had lost 1,250 men since Hangard Wood and that these had not been replaced. These losses were severely felt, for it had exhausted its reserves and managed to hold on the 12th because it had been reinforced by two rifle companies and a machine-gun company from the 7th tirailleurs.

  The Moroccan Division was called upon to spearhead Foch's offensive of July 18 against the salient created by the German advance south of Soissons. The attack, preceded by tanks and a rolling barrage, was considered one of the most brilliant tactical actions of the Legion during the war, despite the fact that the barrage often outran the infantry, which had to halt to clear up machine-gun nests. In less than two hours, the Legion had overrun the German positions and taken a large number of prisoners. The commander of the Moroccan Division believed that one reason that the results of his troops were superior to that of others was that his division had shed its field packs and therefore could move forward quickly. The Germans counterattacked three times behind a heavy artillery barrage on July 20. Despite heavy losses, the Legion held their positions, and the German attacks exhausted themselves. Nevertheless, while praising the operation, the division commander believed that the advance might have been greater on the first day had the liaisons between the command posts and the front lines been more effective. He also pointed out that infantry-artillery liaison left much to be desired,51 demonstrating that the French had yet to achieve the flexibility to allow them to deal with unforeseen developments that departed from the prearranged battle plan. The three days of combat had again cost the Legion heavily—780 men—and provoked Rollet's fears for the future of the RMLE.

  And those fears were well founded, for the Legion was again thrown into the line near Soissons on September 1 and charged with pursuing the Germans, who were making a fighting retreat to the north. On September 2 it took the villages of Terny and Sorny after two days of attacks by American troops had faltered before it. But the countryside around Terny and Sorny was heavily defended by machine-gun nests, against which the Legion advanced, using infiltration tactics, only with great difficulty. Despite heavy losses that had reduced many Legion companies to fifty men, the Moroccan Division,
including the Legion, was thrown at the Hinden-burg Line on September 14. Legionnaires in the battalion under the command of Major Fernand Maire captured double their numbers in German prisoners. The Germans reposted with counterattacks and gas shells, which increased the fatigue of fighting in gas masks. The Hindenburg Line had been pierced, but the fighting had cost the Legion 10 officers and 275 legionnaires killed and 1,118 wounded.52 September 14 became the fête du régiment for the 3e étranger. So decorated was the RMLE already that a third fourragère combining the colors of the Légion d'honneur and the croix de guerre had to be invented for it.

  However, the decorations showered upon the RMLE in themselves would cause controversy, for they led to accusations that the foreigners had been employed as cannon fodder, and that the Legion was a sacrificial corps. In some ways the Legion contributed (and continues to contribute) to the credibility of these charges by its insistence that it always asks for the most difficult tasks, those considered beyond the capabilities of other units. The American Legionnaire Bennett Doty wrote of the Legion in World War I,